Hi,
I'm trying to add a "remember me" feature to my web app to let a user stay logged in between browser restarts. I think I got the bulk of it. I'm using google app engine for the backend which lets me use java servlets. Here is some pseudo-code to demo:
public class MyServlet {
public void handleRequest() {
if (getThreadLocalRequest().getSession().getAttribute("user") != null) {
// User already has session running for them.
}
else {
// No session, but check if they chose 'remember me' during
// their initial login, if so we can have them 'auto log in'
// now.
Cookie[] cookies = getThreadLocalRequest().getCookies();
if (cookies.find("rememberMePlz").exists()) {
// The value of this cookie is the cookie id, which is a
// unique string that is in no way based upon the user's
// name/email/id, and is hard to randomly generate.
String cookieid = cookies.find("rememberMePlz").value();
// Get the user object associated with this cookie id from
// the data store, would probably be a two-step process like:
//
// select * from cookies where cookieid = 'cookieid';
// select * from users where userid = 'userid fetched from above select';
User user = DataStore.getUserByCookieId(cookieid);
if (user != null) {
// Start session for them.
getThreadLocalRequest().getSession()
.setAttribute("user", user);
}
else {
// Either couldn't find a matching cookie with the
// supplied id, or maybe we expired the cookie on
// our side or blocked it.
}
}
}
}
}
// On first login, if user wanted us to remember them, we'd generate
// an instance of this object for them in the data store. We send the
// cookieid value down to the client and they persist it on their side
// in the "rememberMePlz" cookie.
public class CookieLong {
private String mCookieId;
private String mUserId;
private long mExpirationDate;
}
Alright, this all makes sense. The only frightening thing is what happens if someone finds out the value of the cookie? A malicious individual could set that cookie in their browser and access my site, and essentially be logged in as the user associated with it!
On the same note, I guess this is why the cookie ids must be difficult to randomly generate, because a malicious user doesn't have to steal someone's cookie - they could just randomly assign cookie values and start logging in as whichever user happens to be associated with that cookie, if any, right?
Scary stuff, I feel like I should at least include the username in the client cookie such that when it presents itself to the server, I won't auto-login unless the username+cookieid match in the DataStore.
Any comments would be great, I'm new to this and trying to figure out a best practice. I'm not writing a site which contains any sensitive personal information, but I'd like to minimize any potential for abuse all the same,
Thanks
